Connoisseur of all things pop culture

Pop Culture Odds and Ends – It’s Hard Out Here For a Political Scientist Edition

Since I didn’t know that one could make a living as a pop culture maven back when I was in college, I took a different path of majoring in both political science and economics. I was good at economics but didn’t necessarily enjoy it, so I chose to pursue political science when I went to graduate school, where I spent way too long pursing (but not actually completing) my PhD. Despite my training, I generally don’t like to talk about politics because its one of those topics where everyone considers themselves an expert even if they don’t really know what they are talking about. I especially avoid political threads on Facebook since that is usually an exercise in futility – people have their ideas and are unlikely to change them so it just dissolves into people trying to “get” their political opponents or a back and forth of pointing blame. The only time I’m compelled to swoop in is when I see some egregious factual errors and even then it has to really bother me to get involved. Biting my tongue is sometimes very hard and it’s been a very rough year as people have become more vocal due to the presidential elections and are getting their information from dubious sources. Some days I just want to force everyone to sit through one of my Political Science 101 lectures to just get the basics right.

Thankfully, pop culture offers me some salvation, which is ironic since people definitely have their opinions about movies, music and TV series (and I usually think that they are wrong about them). I guess because the stakes are low and so much is based on personal taste/opinion rather than cold hard facts that kind of discussion doesn’t bother me. In this week’s roundup I’ve cultivated plenty of info for you to talk about. So get yourself caught up on the pop culture stories that you might have missed while I take some Advil and stay off Facebook.